In the spring of 2020 I helped my organization go virtual as we were left no choice with the Pandemic ramping up. I had been teaching junior and senior industrial design studio for many years (mostly at Wentworth University) and had been exploring virtual collaboration tools. I wasn’t doing this because I thought they were better than being in person, but because I had to given my schedule as a Principle Designer in a multinational corporation with eighty thousand employees. The way this worked was that I had a co-professor who was an alum of the program and is a very talented designer. He would be in the studio and I would video in when needed using the collaboration platform to run the entire class, augmenting what was going on in the studio. We were successfully collaborating in a hybrid fashion. This worked really well and then COVID came to our neck of the woods. Students had the choice of staying in their dorms or coming to class which was a five minute walk away. They stayed in their dorms, leaving my co-teacher in the studio alone and making our class virtual.

Being customer facing and working almost exclusively with the Market was interesting during this time. For people who are used to traveling to be in front of customers every week this was an attack to some’s identity. I was able to apply what I had been doing with virtual platforms in education to our commercial work with great success. We were able to collaborate more given the time we saved not flying, we were welcomed in to our customer’s homes (on screen) and gained Empathy. Doctors were human and venders were parents. Both parties might have the occasional visit from a furry colleague or a child in mid tantrum from remote learning. We found that we were as effective virtually as we were in person, but we missed being with people and felt isolated sometimes. I remember reflecting at the end of 2020 that we had grown more efficient and effective, but we didn’t develop any new deep relationships or have as much fun. Then I got a text from a new customer who I considered to be a friend an realized that although we had augmented each other’s designs teams throughout the year (and had a lot of fun) we had never met in person. I’m not sure how this happened and I haven’t been able to replicate it consistently, but they weren’t the first close colleague I made throughout this journey. These were strange days and we were confident that we could deliver being all virtual or all in person, but a mix of the two remains a challenge. I have continued to experiment with hybrid sessions in the corporate environment both real time and asynchronously and have had some success, but not consistently.

Now it seems that I am in a world of bad behavior. I remember sitting in board rooms and seeing a colleague excuse themselves to go take a quick call in the hall to return after a few minutes apologetically. Now I see people on two or three meetings at the same time. Some don’t even bother turning off their camera as they take another call while everyone on the original call is left to watch as if they have gone mad talking to themselves. I kind of miss the days when people would loom next to my desk waiting until I was done with whatever to discuss something on their mind. Now I have one colleague who will call, chat, email and text all at the same time to get me to ping them. I used to be able to tell who had drifted in a room and could course correct ,getting everyone back to the present. Last week I was on several video calls with colleagues who were driving!

It was always necessary to set expectations that design collaboration was active, engaging and that one needed to make the time and space to be present. This was also true when we went all virtual however we learned many little best practices. With hybrid work the need for self awareness, kindness to others, kindness to self and Empathy are more necessary than ever. As a reflection a friend of mine likes to ask the question, “during this time how did you experience me and how did you experience yourself”? I think given more time we will figure ourselves out with this hybrid thing.